The Carroll Street Bridge, spanning the Gowanus Canal, was built in 1889 by engineers Robert Van Buren and George Ingram and the Brooklyn Department of City Works (when Brooklyn was a city). One of the oldest bridges in New York City, it is also one of two retractile bridges left in New York, and the oldest of four left in the United States (one built at Borden Avenue in Queens in 1908, and two in Boston in the 1890's).
In the 1860's, developer Edwin C. Litchfield dredged and enlarged Gowanus Creek, and the resulting Gowanus Canal drained the swampy area enlarging Brooklyn's waterfront. Coal and lumber dealers, requiring low-cost water transportation settled along the canal. An existing bridge on Carroll Street was closed in 1887, and land was purchased to build the new 107-foot long retractile bridge. The structure, which supports a 17-foot roadway and two 4.5-foot sidewalks, was manufactured by the New Jersey Steel and Iron Company, a subsidiary of Cooper, Hewitt & Company, one of the country's foremost iron and steel producers.
The retractile bridge slides open horizontally to a perpendicular angle in the middle of the Gowanus Canal until shipping has passed through the 36-foot wide channel. A
pair of gates on either end of the Belgian blocked street close when the bridge is in an open position.
This sign over the bridge, a clever DOT reproduction of a sign that first appeared when the bridge opened, was aimed at "drivers" of horse carriages rather than automobiles. It reads:
Any person driving over this bridge faster than a walk will be subject to a penalty of five dollars for each offence
The Carroll Street Bridge was featured in a hilarious sequence in the 1985 movie Heaven Help Us, starring Andrew McCarthy and Donald Sutherland. It was restored in 1989, in time for its 100th anniversary, by the city's Department of Transportation after being left open since 1986 due to track misalignment.
The Carroll Street Bridge was designated a landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1987.
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